During last month’s SXSW, we got a preview of the anticipated soundtrack for Amazon’s The Man In the High Castle produced by Danger Mouse and Sam Cohen (listen to our interview here). The album features 17 artists taking on iconic tracks from the ‘60s (plus some “lesser-knowns”) and it boasts quite the impressive roster of musicians and an eye-catching tracklist. One particular standout is singer/songwriter Kevin Morby’s cover of the quintessential love song: “I Only Have Eyes For You.”
Doo-wop group The Flamingos are primarily credited for bringing this “sacred” track to life but Morby does them proud with his rendition. Strings guide the cover along with Morby’s weathered tenor vocals front and center. It’s a welcome and unique direction for this classic number.
Today, we are thrilled to premiere Kevin Morby’s take on “I Only Have Eyes for You”; listen below and get Danger Mouse’s take on the cover.
From producer Danger Mouse:
“‘I Only Have Eyes for You’ had been recorded a ton of times before The Flamingos made it into that. These songs were just vehicles for people or for groups, so it was very craft-oriented. The band that we worked with know their music so well and were such great musicians, as were the people back then, that they only had to hear the song few times. We’re talking about playing back songs that are pretty famous, but there are a handful of songs on this album that nobody had heard before. So them listening to it, interpreting it… and the next thing you know, you have a recording an hour and a half later… It’s just very, very different. Just the compartmentalizing of the songwriting by the musicians and then of the singers — you could see how people were just turning it out, just one after the other. And the good stuff sticks — you could use that song with a different group every few years, and it can make somebody else famous, and nobody would care.”
Resistance Radio: The Man In the High Castle Album drops tomorrow (4/7); stream/buy here.
